Expert witnesses called by Sen. Barbara Boxer to testify during Senate Environment and Public Works hearings Thursday contradicted a key assertion made by President Barack Obama on climate change.

Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser less than a month before directing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose costly new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions, Obama said, “we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago.”

“I don’t have much patience for people who deny climate change,” Obama added.

During Thursday’s Environment and Public Works hearings, Sen. David Vitter asked a panel of experts, including experts selected by Boxer, “Can any witnesses say they agree with Obama’s statement that warming has accelerated during the past 10 years?”

Nobody said a word. After several seconds of deafening silence, Weather Channel meteorologist and global warming activist Heidi Cullen attempted to change the subject. Cullen said our focus should be on longer time periods rather than the 10-year period mentioned by Obama. When pressed, however, she contradicted Obama’s central assertion and said warming has slowed, not accelerated.

Several minutes later, Sen. Jeff Sessions returned to the topic and sought additional clarity. Sessions recited Obama’s quote claiming accelerating global warming during the past 10 years and asked, “Do any of you support that quote?”

Again, a prolonged and deafening silence ensued. Neither Cullen nor any of the other experts on the panel spoke a word, not even in an attempt to change the subject.

Boxer may have envisioned her high-profile global warming hearings as an opportunity to build momentum for congressional or EPA action to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, the very global warming activists she called to serve as expert witnesses delivered a crushing blow to Obama’s central justification for expensive new restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions.

NASA’s Goddard Institute reported data confirming no warming for at least the past decade. The data, reflecting surface temperature measurements compiled, adjusted, and reported by global warming activists, confirm NASA satellite temperature readings showing no global warming for more than a decade. The data are important because the Goddard Institute generally claims more warming is occurring than what is measured by NASA satellite instruments, and global warming alarmists usually cite Goddard Institute data rather than NASA satellite data when making claims about recent temperatures.

Heidi Cullen, a meteorologist formerly working for the Weather Channel, claimed in Thursday’s Senate hearings on climate change there has been a 73 percent increase in downpours due to global warming. Objective data from the U.S. Geological Survey, however, show no trend in flooding events for at least the past 60 years, providing strong evidence against Cullen’s claim.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee published a 23-page report debunking many alarmist global warming myths. The senators released the report, “Critical Thinking on Climate Change,” on the same day Environment and Public Works chair Barbara Boxer held hearings to call attention to climate change. The senators’ report masterfully debunks global warming myths and includes 91 footnoted references.

Satellite measurements of the polar ice caps show polar sea ice remains above the long-term average, as has been the case for most of 2013. The satellite data, provided by NASA and NOAA, provide appropriate context to assertions made in Thursday’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearings that global warming is causing a decline in Arctic sea ice. As the satellite data show, expanding Southern Hemisphere sea ice is more than compensating for modest declines in Northern Hemisphere sea ice.